Galveston's Red Light District Quotes

“Angeline Dickinson Galveston’s first well-known madam rose to Texas fame in the 1860s. They called her the “Babe of the Alamo,” because she and her mother were the only white persons to survive the San Antonio slaughter in 1836.”
― Kimber Fountain, Galveston's Red Light District: A History of The Line

“Civilized society owes much more to madams than it realizes. Tales of how the West was won do not mention that conquering the uncivilized terrain was a losing battle until a few fearless and shrewd women stepped in. Before madams arrived on the scene, most “towns” were merely work camps full of men with nowhere to spend their money. The money that madams made from their conveniently captive audience they invested into general stores, clothing shops, hotels and schools; they even bought entire towns. A spattering of tent cities was now on its way to becoming a network of legitimate municipalities.”
― Kimber Fountain, Galveston's Red Light District: A History of The Line

“One of the most intact relics of Galveston’s red-light days is now an antiques salvage shop called the Antique Warehouse, located on the northwest corner of Twenty-Fifth Street and Postoffice. It was once a segregated rooming house called the Oleander Hotel, later converted into a bordello. The layout of the second floor remains untouched; twenty-eight small rooms circle the inner and outer perimeters of the second floor, with an atrium in the center of the interior rooms and one long continuous hallway connecting it all. One larger room on the outside wall doubled as the madam’s room and the parlor, where the girls would line up for the customers. The smallest room, located along one of the interior rows, was the only bathroom for thirty women.8”
― Kimber Fountain, Galveston's Red Light District: A History of The Line

“But whatever their reasons, these were women who valued their independence even more than they valued their dignity or place in society, and certainly more than an arbitrary moral code.”
― Kimber Fountain, Galveston's Red Light District: A History of The Line